


Scars (What Doesn't Kill You)

by orphan_account



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Dean Bears The Mark of Cain, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Love Letters, M/M, Mark of Cain, POV Castiel, Slow Burn, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-01
Updated: 2014-10-01
Packaged: 2018-02-19 13:06:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,068
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2389325
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>letters to Dean from Castiel's journal regarding the Mark of Cain.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Scars (What Doesn't Kill You)

 

> _I stuck my head                 i was sad                                         and i laid down                                and one day_  
>  _underwater                        and you were sad                            and closed my eyes                          you'll be happy_  
>  _but forgot                          but that didn't                                 but forgot                                        but not because_  
>  _to drown                            cancel it out                                    to sleep                                            of me._  
>               horizontal poems, - k.p.k

 

\------

 

**Tuesday.**

  
Damn you, Dean. What have you done?

  
\--

  
  
 **Friday.**

  
You're tired, and through you just slept (only after my Grace shut you down), I know the worry lines will never fade from your face. I know you will always be tired, and I know that when your linear human timeline stopped its build your pain never did. It makes no sense for me to touch you, an inefficacious attempt to smooth out the tension and bring nonexistent peace to a raging ocean, but I still do. This is how you will wake up, from now until you tell me otherwise - with our ageless bodies locked together like vines and our ever-aging eyes searching for solace within the flecks of each others' irises.  
  
God help me, I can't find it anymore.  
  
 **later.**

  
Have I ever told you how beautiful your eyes are? I'll remember to tell you tonight.

 

  
  
 **Saturday.**

  
It makes no difference how much I touch you, your lines will never smooth out and the raging ocean in your head will never settle. This I know. I am well aware that the fissures along your forehead and in the corners of your eyes aren't things i can heal by re-connecting cells and tissue, but that doesn't stop me from trying. It's fruitless, the one miracle I can never grant you… the cracks that harrow you and wear you down despite your immortality come from places I cannot touch (oh, how I want to, always I want to). It helps you sometimes, gentle caresses and rough embraces and drawn-out sex and every other excuse we invent in our wordless language to connect, but your relief is always fleeting. Gone, faster than the saturating liquor through your veins, the pain will always awaken. Sooner or later the memories catch up to you - to both of us.  
  
Satiation is a fantasy, but of course, you knew that already.  
  
It is the curse of immortality, and it brings me no comradery to know that this is our shared burden now. This is how I know your exhaustion. This is how I understand your desperate need to remain distant and inebriated, though I tell you in every way I know that I want you to stop. I know that this is all you have, and I know that I am not a drug. I cannot swim through your veins and touch the parts of you that ache, for you are a galaxy and you are drowning in dead stars - heavy and devoid, refusing to burn up the memories you carry. I am not God. I cannot rewrite the stars for you.  
  
The alcohol is all you have, and I am sorry it doesn't work anymore. You drink enough to forget how to walk but it's not enough to keep the ghosts at bay. You drink enough to have to stumble though the black so you can curl yourself around me in ~~our~~ ~~your~~ ~~our~~ your bed, and it still isn't enough to let yourself sleep.  
  
I am not God. I am not divine intervention.  
I am worthless to you right now.

 

  
  
 **Sunday.**

  
It's so greedy, the Mark. It's heinous and abominable and I want to tear it from your skin for having the audacity to cause you pain. You are mine; I brought you back to your world and the reason you left it, I rebuilt you from the soul outward, I staked my claim on your very structure and this unholy curse is taking you from me one breath at a time. Damn you back to hell, Dean, for letting it. Damn you.  
  
Damn me for not stopping you.

 

  
  
 **Monday.**

  
We both are damned, already. Did you not know that? You know you are (though I am not sure you completely understand what that means), and by association I am damned as well. Wherever you go, I will follow. That, I think you do understand. Either way I won't stop pressing it into your furrowed brow, your cracked and broken knuckles, anywhere you will let me kiss you.  
  
Ever since the first time you let me (it took you so agonizingly long, you know, but I promised Sam and myself not to push you), it's been everywhere and all the time and you still tell me you want more. It somehow makes sense, because so do I.  
  
You will soon be disillusioned with me. You think I am a drug, I can tell by the starving way you touch me, but whatever form you see me as is the form I want to be.  
  
It's more than enough for me, just to watch you breathe.

 

  
  
 **Tuesday.**

  
It's unfair though, if I am correct. You are damned, and I am here, but in the laws of my damnation I would never be able to have you. I "get off easy" as you would say. I don't in any way deserve to, but you do and you aren't getting off easy. You are not dying, but a fate worse than Death, right in front of me.  
I think that I would give up my place in Heaven if it made room for you.  
  
 **later.**

  
I can still feel the heaviness in your kiss, the dimness in your soul. My only hope is that my presence is as comforting to you as yours is to me despite all that.

 

  
  
 **Thursday.**

  
You're tired today. You were tired yesterday, and you are tired now, and you will be tired tomorrow, and you will be tired in 10 years. You are an infinite mirror of exhaustion and I do not know if, in a hundred or a thousand or a million years, I will even have the courage to stand by your side and watch the Mark devour you. You cannot die, that we both know… but, how much truth is there to the Mark's promise? You will be paying your debts to that god damned scorch mark on your arm for all of eternity, and soon you will have nothing left for it to take.  
  
It will be torture to stay with you when that happens, but of course you know I will.  
  
Maybe I was wrong earlier. Maybe that's my damnation.

 

  
  
 **Friday.**

  
Forever is a long time, in your eyes at least, but it does not frighten me knowing that somewhere, you still exist. Does that make me selfish?

 

  
  
 **Wednesday.**

  
You're leaving this place, I can tell from the way your soul is branching out in all directions except here. Perhaps it's me. I should leave, maybe. I should do a lot of things. Should stop drawing maps of you in my head from the roads my hands and mouth pave, should stop all this built-up hunger for every shred of you you'll give me. I am your drug and you are quickly becoming mine. It's overflowing, we both know, and what if I drown you? What would happen now that you can't die?  
  
I should do so much, but I can't seem to. I should...  
  
 **later.**

  
I should be better. Should fix you, all the parts that are killing you, invisible and fluid. Should build you up again (I memorized how) from scratch, and absorb all the pain away from you before it blinds you. Lick it right out from the turned-down corners of your mouth, claw it from your tension-wrought back as you're fucking me into the mattress. What good am I if I cannot heal you, the purpose for everything I ever did and ever will do?  
Tell me, Dean. What good am I to you?  
  
I am failing you and I am so, so sorry. It would be best not to forgive me.

 

  
  
 **Thursday.**

  
You told me this morning that you were leaving for a few days - investigating something vague and frankly unpromising - and that I should stay. I want you to know you are not obligated to return, if you decide. So I am giving you this notebook, and myself, just in case you need it spelled out for you (Sam's words, also his idea).

  
  
It's hard for me to tell you things with more than my eyes and hands and lips and teeth, but I will try.  
  
The human language is so limiting for what I have to say to you, Dean. The word love is a teardrop in an ocean of how deeply I feel for you. I am not good with my words, or my hands, or anything else for that matter, but I am yours and that, I am afraid, is the best I can offer you. I wish it could be more. I wish I could be your drug. I wish i could take your burdens from you. But you wouldn't let me, would you?  
  
 ~~Please don't ever leave me~~  
 ~~Please let me fix you~~  
 ~~marry me~~  
 ~~Damn you~~ I love you for all you've made me feel for you.  
I would have loved you all my borrowed life, and I would have loved you all of yours. But I worry that you may not want to do the same, and truth be told the selfish part of me wants you to die still believing that I am worth the second chances you've given me. The selfish part of me wants you to grow old so that I can imprint myself on all of your natural years and leave my Grace on all of your breaths as you age. I want to see you happy. I want to trace the lines along your face that were put there from laughing instead of hurting. I want to be the only mark you will ever feel, one that gives you comfort instead of bleeding you dry. I just don't know if that is what I provide you.  
  
  
I hope you know all of this already. I hope this letter is superfluous. Either way I want to keep telling you in any way that I possibly can - I love you. I have always loved you, and I will always love you. Take it as you will, it's all I have left to offer.  
  
I want to apologize for the selfish part of me that disregards your suffering in favor of allowing me to live alongside you into eternity, no matter the quality of said life. It's dreadful, I know, to wish this upon you, but it has always been my desire - far before it was an option for you. I even argued with my Father on several occasions, knowing that He would one day take you away from me. I now know the error of my desperation, and I am so sorry I tried to deprive you of your sleep. Temporary or eternal, you deserve to rest. I never deserved you.  
  
It's odd… now that I have what I want, I would give anything to take it back. My Heaven is your Hell and I know this now and I am sorry I ever wished this upon you. I never thought you would make such a damning decision, but now looking back and knowing your reason why, I should have known better.  
  
It was Sam, and so of course you set yourself on fire to keep him warm. I imagine the burns marks are a comfort to you, knowing that.  
So now that this destiny, whatever it is to you, has become a reality; Dean Winchester, damn you, I love you.  
From the callouses on your palms to the fractures in your smile to the flicker of your soul, I love you, Dean Winchester. And through whatever fate humanity meets, whatever battles we fight and whatever hells we see, that will never change. Together or apart, human or stardust, I will love you until and beyond eternity. You will always have me by your side, and if you send me away I will wait for you and I will always come when you call. This is my everlasting promise to you.  
  
Take it as you will. It's all I have, and I am giving it to you.  
  
Thank you for your time. Good luck on your hunt.  
  
Yours,  
~Castiel.


End file.
